Late Jurassic salamanders from northern China

Ke-Qin Gao () and Neil H. Shubin
Additional contact information
Ke-Qin Gao: American Museum of Natural History
Neil H. Shubin: University of Chicago

Nature, 2001, vol. 410, issue 6828, 574-577

Abstract: Abstract With ten extant families, salamanders (urodeles) are one of the three major groups of modern amphibians (lissamphibians)1,2,3,4,5,6. Extant salamanders are often used as a model system to assess fundamental issues of developmental, morphological and biogeographical evolution6,7,8,9,10,11. Unfortunately, our understanding of these issues has been hampered by the paucity of fossil evidence available to assess the early history of the group5,6,12. Here we report the discovery of an extraordinary sample of salamander fossils, some with rare soft-tissue impressions, from the Upper Jurassic of China13,14,15,16. With over 500 articulated specimens, this assemblage documents the morphological diversity of early urodeles and includes larvae and adults of both neotenic and metamorphosed taxa. Phylogenetic analysis confirms that these salamanders are primitive, and reveals that all basal salamander clades have Asian distributions. This is compelling evidence for an Asian origin of Recent salamanders, as well as for an extensive and early radiation of several major lineages. These discoveries show that the evolution of salamanders has involved phylogenetic and ecological diversification around a body plan that has remained fundamentally stable for over 150 million years.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35069051 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:410:y:2001:i:6828:d:10.1038_35069051

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35069051

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().